kinbarichan

kinbarichan

113p

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10 years ago @ The Toast - Link Roundup! · 1 reply · +4 points

Wait - are you The Boy Who Couldn't Shiver?

10 years ago @ The Toast - Link Roundup! · 9 replies · +4 points

So here I am to add a 'Yes, and..." and a Yes, but..."
I had one truly terrifying experience in Utah that has all the hallmarks of an encounter with Super Low Frequency - shared feelings of terror, dread, a sense of imminent doom, hallucinations - all of which dissipated when we left. It was a harrowing experience, but it can be explained. (It was dark, so we couldn't see what might have been resonating - maybe the wind through rocks?)
But - I've had experiences which were straight-up inexplicable. When my sister and I were nine and ten, we were home alone, watching TV - and the bathroom sink began running full force. The bathroom door was in full view of the living room sofa - we would have seen someone enter, if anyone were there. When we turned off the water, both faucets had been cranked all the way open. It only happened once, but I've never been able to figure out an explanation for it.
When I was older, I worked at a summer camp. For about two weeks, there were mysterious red marks that appeared throughout the pool building - first, a full red handprint in one of the bathroom stalls - not blood, not paint, more the texture of lipstick, but not the smell. When I rubbed it with my fingers, they were stained with red pigment, which was hard to wash off. I was roommates with the lifeguard, the only person with a key to the pool building; we both thought it was a practical joke and decided not to tell anyone, in hopes that the prankster would reveal themselves by asking about the red smudges and smears that were revealing themselves in multiple places inside the building.
Nobody asked, yet the marks kept appearing, in the oddest places - in the back of a closet, on the edge of a crash door, under a bag of styrofoam peanuts, on a floor that had been scrubbed clean just a half-hour before.
The marks stopped appearing after two weeks.
We never found out who did it, we never found out why, and I've never come across any oily pigmented (it never dried either!) substance to match the marks in the pool building. It's a mystery!
Last, we rented a lake house in Japan for a week, and, for the first two nights, the attic light kept turning on and off during the night. Nobody was up there, there was no practical cause of the light going on and off, (I checked the wiring, the switch, the socket, and the bulb) and there was no explanation- I tried my best to find one, because I would choose Science over Spirits every day, if I could.
So yes, Low Frequency can explain the things you feel, but not the documentable things that happen.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Link Roundup! · 0 replies · +33 points

I have a simple theory: apocalypse scenarios have such great appeal because it is easier to imagine the death of humanity as a whole than it is to imagine that we, as individuals, die and the world continues on without us.

We are all Pharoah and we carry the world into our tomb.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Link Roundup! · 1 reply · +3 points

Shirley Jackson's The Night we All Had Grippe might be good. Also, she wrote an essay about the public reaction to The Lottery that shows people's reaction to the piece - it's pretty cause-and-effect, in that it shows (humorously) how one small thing can have a huge, unexpected effect.

10 years ago @ The Toast - Confessions of an Ambi... · 1 reply · +14 points

I was never a Girl Guide, (Canadian version of Girl Scouts) but I was a Guider for six years, by virtue of having a daughter in the troop and an ability/willingness to play the guitar for campfire time.
Things look very different when you're a leader - the sleepover at the science museum, the sleepover at the aquarium - the program coordinators think that a 1:00 am bedtime is perfectly acceptable, but there is something peculiarly disagreeable about having to wrangle large groups of small girls after midnight - exhausted beyond all patience, the girls just want to lie down, and I am stuck telling that one mother (purportedly here as a 'chaperone', really here to push her kid to the front of every line) that no, she can't set up a queen-sized air mattress for her little princess right in front of the beluga exhibit because all the girls have to fit into that space, and her daughter's comfort may be important to her, but all the girls' view of the belugas is important to me.
I spent so much time organizing a fair view of the belugas for all the girls that I forgot to claim a space for my daughter and me.

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Pacific Northwest ... · 0 replies · +16 points

Yes - they have all these signs along the ocean road that say, "Tsunami Escape Route", with a little figure just booking it away from a giant wave. it's a lie - there's no escape if the whole friggin' Pacific Ocean decides to pay a visit.

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Pacific Northwest ... · 1 reply · +5 points

I've heard that builders in Vancouver only use the really good, bendy glass, so those big ol' panes just sway gently along with the rest of the building while the ground ripples underneath...

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Pacific Northwest ... · 1 reply · +31 points

My husband and I were living in Japan in 1995. One winter morning, we were woken by a distant but powerful earthquake - the whole building was swaying, the dishes were clinking, something fell over with a bang - the first thing I said was, "Well, there goes Tokyo."
Everyone knew that Tokyo was overdue for a huge earthquake - so many fault lines run under that city, it's like a Fabergé egg perched on top of a stack of shattered dinner plates.
We turned on the TV, expecting to see footage of the ruins of Tokyo - and saw, instead, the ruins of Kobe. Nobody predicted it, nobody expected it - everyone was so busy worrying about the deep faults under Tokyo that they overlooked the shallow fault that ran right beside Kobe.
So yes, the Cascadia Subduction Zone could go off at any time - but so could something else, some unexplored fault that takes everyone by surprise, somewhere not here.
I have to believe that, because otherwise I'd be worried all the time, instead of the currently acceptable 47% of the time that I worry now.

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Pacific Northwest ... · 2 replies · +8 points

I just deleted a post where I said, "Well, at least I'm not in Victoria!" (Sorry - it's just that Victoria has a few interesting fault lines running right under downtown)
But you can always throw your hands in the air and shout, "Whoo - at least I'm not in Tofino!

Or Port Renfrew...

10 years ago @ The Toast - The Pacific Northwest ... · 4 replies · +29 points

The Cascadia subduction zone veers west off the coast of Vancouver Island, which, in theory, means that the west coast of the Island will receive the brunt of the earthquake action. As for tsunamis, both Seattle and Vancouver will be significantly protected by the Strait of Juan De Fuca, which will limit the amount and force of the water that can force its way in through that relatively narrow passage.

So, aside from the deadly cascades of glass falling from all the high-rise condos, the liquefaction of the sandy soil under half of Greater Vancouver and the collapse of civil society that will inevitably follow, Vancouver will be okay.

Also, Canadian earthquake maps go completely blank below the border, so the indifference cuts both ways, I guess.